The old house stood silent, a mausoleum of memories. Dust motes danced in the lone shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom, illuminating the faded grandeur of a life abruptly ended. Raine Garcia, now seventeen, ran a tentative hand over the worn banister, a phantom echo of childish laughter still clinging to the wood. Ten years. Ten years since the car, the gunshots, the terrifying man with the snake tattoo. Ten years since her world splintered, leaving her an orphan, exiled to a new life across an ocean.

Her grandfather, the stoic Police Chief, had dropped her off with a gruff warning and a mysterious, sealed envelope. He’d barely looked at her, his eyes clouded with an old pain. Now, surrounded by the ghosts of her past, Raine felt a familiar fire ignite within her – the same fire that had driven her to solve petty school mysteries in America. But this wasn't America. And these weren't petty mysteries. This was home, and the shadows here were real, lethal, and tied to the very core of her existence.

Outside, the familiar chirping of cicadas mingled with the distant hum of city traffic, a deceptively peaceful backdrop to the storm brewing within her. She was back. And this time, she wouldn’t just survive; she would find the truth.